High throughput screening methodologies are useful for rapid assessments of many material combinations. While US Patent Publication 2005/0179156 sets forth various sample formation techniques that can be used in high throughput screening, there is still a need for a system that has improved throughput.
While pin or rod mixers are known, e.g., see Tadmor & Gogos, Principles of Polymer Processing, Ch. 1, 11; Chris Rauwendaal, Polymer Mixing; Zumbrunnen & Inamdar, Chem. Eng. Sci., 56 (2001), 3893, the existing form of these mixers generally has not been suitable for use in high throughput research techniques.
As used herein, “workflow” refers to an integrated process comprised of at least the following steps: experimental design, blending, transformation into test specimens, testing to determine one or more properties relevant to the research or development problem at hand, and data analysis. In this context, “high throughput” refers to a workflow where these steps are very well integrated and time-compressed such that the overall time to execute the workflow per material is anywhere from 2 to 100 or more times as fast as a standard non-high throughput workflow.